The People's Judge: Relief in sight for Flagler's busy county court

Sunday

Three years ago, a statewide study showed Flagler's lone county judge was the busiest county judge in Florida. Help may be on the way.

Flagler County Judge Melissa Distler starts most of her workdays before the sun rises.

She often awakes at 5 a.m., in time for a cardio workout and breakfast before arriving at the Kim C. Hammond Justice Center each weekday before 7:30. The Bunnell courthouse opens at 8.

Three years ago a statewide study showed Distler, formerly Moore Stens, was the busiest county judge in Florida. And as Flagler County’s population of 110,000 continues to grow, the number of cases she handles has been increasing.

Help may be on the way. Gov. Ron DeSantis is reviewing the state's proposed $91.1-billion budget, which includes funding for several new judgeships. And Flagler is one of two counties slated to get another judge permanently assigned to its county courts docket effective July 1.

That's when a House bill sponsored by State Rep. Paul Renner, R-Palm Coast, would take effect. Funding for his bill is included in this year's budget but it has to clear a final hurdle: the governor's veto pen.

"We hope he will approve it," Renner said Thursday. "Obviously it's something that will really help from a time-to-justice standpoint on both the civil and criminal side."

Flagler County has been here before. Then-Gov. Rick Scott intervened at the final hour in 2017 to slash from the budget a $152,000 allocation that would've paid for a year's worth of judicial relief in Flagler.

"It was definitely disappointing," Distler recalled. "I was already thinking of how I was going to share the wealth, and then it got pulled out from underneath me."

Workload study

It’s been a groundbreaking 12 months in the judge's personal life. In September, she celebrated her 20-year professional anniversary. A few months later, she ran unopposed and won a second term on the bench. Then, in February, the divorced mother of a school-age daughter and son married John Distler, business development manager at Yellowstone Landscape in Bunnell.

Known as one of the hardest working judges in the state, Judge Distler handles a robust docket of misdemeanor, criminal traffic and small claims civil cases as well as noncriminal traffic infractions that involve either injury or death.

In 2017, she presided over 4,569 cases, Flagler Clerk of Court records show. That’s about 3% more than her caseload from 2016 and 5% higher than in 2015. An influx of personal injury claims pushed her total to 6,442 cases by the end of 2018.

Putnam County, with a population of about 75,000, Flagler’s most comparable district in the Seventh Circuit, has two county judges. They shared 4,945 cases in 2016-17, according to the Office of the State Courts Administrator.

“The thing is, I like being busy and I knew that I was busy,” Distler said during an interview with the News-Journal. “But I guess I didn’t really think about it in those terms until I saw the workload study.”

It’s a workload that can require Distler to pore over thousands of pages of case law within 24 hours, hear nearly 150 cases in a day, or work well into the night to prepare for a hearing the next day. She also serves on Flagler’s Canvassing Board, an added assignment that can eat into her already tight schedule during election years.

On top of that, she teaches classes annually for newly appointed judges at small conferences and judicial colleges and mentors students enrolled in the Law and Justice Academy program at Matanzas High School.

“I don’t know if we had a different judge, that that person would be able to handle what (Distler) does,” said Assistant State Attorney Jason Lewis, who heads up the state's criminal division in Flagler County. “She is able to compensate by her abilities and her skills for having a much higher case load. She’s able to make things still run smoothly.”

County lawmakers have made getting a second county judge a legislative priority for the past three years and Renner and state Sen. Travis Hutson have lobbied for it, trying to convince state policymakers, and the Florida Supreme Court, to approve a second judgeship for Flagler.

Some temporary aid arrived last summer in the form of senior judges. The semiretired magistrates in July began ruling on some Flagler civil cases two days a week. It was a stopgap measure that eased Distler's burden for a while.

Distler earns a salary of about $152,000, according to State of Florida records. If Renner's bill passes, roughly $660,000 would be built into the state's budget for second judgeships in both Flagler and Citrus counties each year. That would pay the new judges' salaries and also fund equipment and supporting staffs in both counties.

[READ ALSO: Senior judges to ease burden on Flagler County courts]

Day in the life

A light pound of a gavel signals the call to order and the day's production begins.

A clerk shouts roll call as bailiffs usher bound suspects to the defendant’s stand. The jingle of their handcuffs clanging lightly against their belts provides a delicate reminder of the stakes.

Prosecutors stand ready to offer plea deals, while nervous family members watch intently from benches in the public gallery.

Distler plods through the collection of allegations, occasionally taking a sip of coffee from the insulated cup on her desk. Her eyes rarely stray from her mark. She looks directly at each defendant as she instructs them, often sharing a quick smile as if in an effort to ease the tension of the moment.

If the proceedings lag, she quickens the pace by shooting a series of rapid-fire questions at attorneys.

When Distler was elected in November 2012, she replaced longtime county judge Sharon Atack, who retired after 17 years on the bench in Flagler. Distler ran unopposed to retain her seat last year.

A South Florida native whose mother was a Miami police officer turned Alachua County deputy, Distler was the first person in her family to earn a college degree. It wasn’t until after she graduated from Florida Atlantic University, though, that she turned her attention to law.

“I really just went to law school more because I wasn’t ready to live in the real world yet,” she said, chuckling.

Almost immediately, Distler fell in love with arguing cases in a courtroom and it wasn’t long before she realized she wanted to one day become a judge. After law school, she became a prosecutor for about 2½ years and later opened law offices in DeLand, Daytona Beach and Palm Coast. She ran her own practice for 12 years before being elected to the bench.

One way she deals with the day-to-day stress is through yoga. In fact, she leads a yoga class twice a week after work and uses breathing techniques that serve as one of the eight pillars of the ancient discipline to steady herself when she feels rushed in the courtroom.

"Really the most important thing to me is listening to people, hearing what they have to say, taking everything into consideration, and obviously not making any decisions before I’ve heard from everybody," Distler said. "Just making sure everybody’s had their day in court and feels like they’ve been heard and had a fair shot."

Judges operate on a 30-day cycle, with one week each month carved out for trials. Distler sets her schedule of criminal arraignments, pre-trial hearings and status conferences around trial week. She also sets aside time for small claims complaints.

Motion-to-suppress hearings and trials involve a lot more work, often requiring Distler to read through hundreds of pages of case law to familiarize herself with the legal arguments being cited.

"I enjoy being prepared," she said. "I think a lot of lawyers tend to procrastinate and wait until the last minute to do things. Whereas I’m very organized. I’m almost like a creature of habit. I like things done a certain way. I think it’s easier to be good at the job if you’re prepared."

William Partington, the division chief of the public defender's office in Flagler, applauds Distler's work ethic. But he said adding a second judge in Flagler would benefit the docket as a whole.

"I think it would be a more seamless system and would allow for a more reasonable workload for each of the judges," he said. "Even the strongest rubber band will snap if you continually put too much pressure or strain on it."

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